I wonder if you could find the right chain of guys who posted better seasons in their 30s than mid-20s to scientifically prove that the quality of basketball play has not changed in the past 70 years

It would be trivial to do it going forward from Issel to now, and you can go back another decade or so with Lenny Wilkens, but you can't do it back to the '50s, just because pretty much no one played into their mid-30s until the late 60s/early 70s.

looks like this guy

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...mcguidi01.html

went from a 8.8/6.0/5.7 line per 36/15.4 PER/.445 TS% in 1952 at age 27

to

11.8/8.8/6.5 per 36/16.4 PER/.491 TS% in 1959 at age 34

seems like a good starting point, and we can extrapolate from those 7 years to conclude no one improved from 1952 to 1972.

Its just the law of the contrapositive guys, pretty basic stuff really

But how did track times change during that period?

And another one bites the debating dust. Typical take your ball and go home guy.

You admit to not following bassketball, yet then preach about how much you know.

Really? Where was the 50% shooting against Lithuania?? Or against any team that knows how to play defense.

What scientific research? Why didn't you post this?

He meant that it's theoretically impossible in this thread to get better with age in basketball in your 30s. You guys like to point out outliers but the normal thing is for players to improve until peak which is around 27 and then decline--when there are some players whose career trajectory doesnt do that and that's the proof you guys are using and it's so ****ing stupid. There are examples which are normally outliers that can prove the points either way but using one or two outliers literally proves nothing but many of you are oblivious to this. I was going to stay out of this thread. ****.

durant and melo were 6-13 from 3 against lithuania

not targeting you at all capone, just this point:

ffs, this number (age 27) refers SOLELY, SOLELY, SOLELY, to physical, purely athletic prime. I don't know what the rate of decline is, but I'm pretty sure it's not linear (just as the rate of improvement isn't), and it can be more than compensated for by increases in knowledge, skills, tactics, etc.

given the all-too-familiar year 2 jump in skills in most sports and their corresponding fall off a cliff, I'd guess that the curve is flat for a fairly large percentage of a player's career. and workout maniacs (like, say, malone) probably extend the length of the curve by a couple years.

its interesting watching nba tv right now - they have bulls-knicks 1992 game 4 conference finals on.

it is such a contrast to see very little dribbling at all by anybody on the offensive end, as opposed to today's game, where a guard is pounding the ball away 25 feet from the hoop as a standard on every possession.

huge difference.

You can say the last thing which is definitely true. But neither, prove the point that Matt has kept trying to make which literally makes as much logical sense as me saying oh, if someone drops out of Harvard--they are going to be the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg--b/c they did it--it must be true for everyone else or true in general. They are outliers--just like Malone is an outlier of what he did well past his peak--Malone is the ONLY player in NBA history to have a greater than 25 PER at 35--yet Matt tries think it proves his point is some sort up mixed up way that 1992 > 2012 and then is mad when nobody e/c himself understand his insane logical conclusion.

Yes, there are players who played well or even better than they did at their traditional normal peak--how does that prove your point that 1992 is some how better than 2012. It literally proves nothing how good or bad the latter league is b/c how they advanced or some how improved with age. All it literally says is some how Malone either plateau or got better with age b/c of something else. I guess in theory the league could have gotten dramatically worse for some reason or another. But there are another laundry list of reasons of why he could have improved or gotten better. It's most likely due to his insane physical shape that he bucked convention but according to Matt, the only logical conclusion is that the league either declined or got much worse b/c that could be the only conclusion in why Malone could have gotten better with age. He is mixing up correlation with causation. Literally I have no idea of what the cause of Malone's improvement is but Matt seems to know with 100% proof that it must be the decline or stagnation of play.

He makes some horrible connection which literally makes no sense but is so ****ing annoying about doing it I really don't feel like arguing anymore.

The 400 meter record hasn't changed since the year after Jordan last dominated.

game vs lit where usa barely escaped is enough evidence that 1992 dream team is superior hands down. head to head the 92 team of malone, robinson, ewing and bark > davis, love, chandler. even if u include griffin or melo (who plays just as effective at pf) its still not enough. backcourt the scorers cancel each other out. the holy trinity of jordan, magic and bird for me is equal to bron, kobe (who has lost a step but still the best sg) and durant. ultimately it comes down to chemistry. 92 dream team played like a team and waltzed to first place. 2012 dream team relies too much on individual talent and just feeds it to one player isolation when they need basket, barely any movement as the the other four spectates.

Of course everybody conveniently forgets Ben Johnson 9.79 in 1988 which would have placed him T3 in 2012. Ignoring lol drug testing, training/surface improvements, and Bolt outlier I really don't think sprinting has progressed a significant amount.

The fact that you use the huge outlier of Johnson whilst ignoring the smaller outlier in Bolt to argue sprinting hasn't improved significantly is one of the more absurd arguments in this thread (and that's saying something).

No it isn't. You guys really need to understand that I'm showing that players like Karl Malone prove that, as a rule, the NBA does not necessarily improve over relatively short amounts of time.

The argument that it refutes is that "2012 has to be better because it's 20 years later and the league improves enough in 20 years that it has to be true."

I am NOT showing, nor even attempting to show, that the league definitively did NOT get better or that it's impossible for the league to improve in 20 years.

The argument shows that it is impossible for the league to have improved dramatically between 1992 and 1999, and since it did not improve dramatically in 7 years, it is incorrect to assume it would improve dramatically in 13 more. Yes, it is possible it did. No, there is no reason to simply assume it did without further evidence.

I predict capone0 to go into seizures after reading this post. "BUT OMMMMGGGG IT DOESN'T PROVE THE LEAGUE GOT WORSE OOMMGGG."

let's not forget that Magic and Bird didn't play much in the 1992 Olympics--but of course they did they were the GOATs.

Actually, what Malone proves is that the league did not improve relative to Malone in the period you're talking about. It's far more likely that the league didn't get any worse, or possibly even improved, and Malone continued to improve than the league got worse. If it was a case of the league getting worse there would be more players that would have similar career arcs to Malone but instead he's an outlier, which strongly implies that the reason is entirely due to him, not due to the league as a whole.

As I've said before though, the whole argument is fairly pointless except as an argument about level of competition, and I don't think even the most avid '92 supporters would argue that the overall level of competition isn't significantly better now than it was in '92.

Your point may have some merit, but needs further investigation. Just as Malone may be an outlier (he really isn't, other great players performed well mid 30s), he can't be thrown out solely for that reason. Medical advances have probably given many players within the last 10-12 years a much longer effective career (e.g. Kobe Bryant, Grant Hill). This single factor alone may account for the improved level of competition between the 90s and today. Players from the 80s and 90s did not have the benefit of modern medicine and reflects poorly on those aging players when they competed against younger players later in their respective careers. Malone was able to play healthy for most of his career (I don't think he missed more than 2 games a season for his entire career) which had much to do with his success, as well as reflecting on his overall health and athletic ability.

I suggest calculating average age per starter NBA from 1990 to now, maybe weighting it on scoring or some other metric that emphasizes performance. If the trend is going up over time or flat, it probably infers that talent is probably not getting much better. Dilution, foreign players, rules changes, game tactics, and other factors may skew the raw stat a bit of course but to a significant degree I really doubt.

So you literally proved nothing. You didn't even hint at one thing. You showed one thing that proves nothing other than Malone is a freak. And you then try to make some giant leap that it helped your argument when it clearly did not prove anything. I'm sorry I'm extremely logical and you make extreme logical jumps that make no sense at all.

Your ARGUMENT does not show its impossible for the league to have improved dramatacally b/c Malone was as good if not better in 1992 than he was in 1999How does that prove anything? Your argument is a huge logical leap that makes no sense. Malone could have in fact been a better overall player in 1999 than he was in 1992--there is nothing in your argument that proves that is wrong. Malone was in insane shape. He like a few players in NBA history have sustained success from the age of 35 and 36 from the age of 26. What does that prove other than how sustained Malone's success was? I'm still insanely confused how you can make a logical leap that it is not impossible that the league improved b/c Malone had sustained success for a long time. And then you extend it to 13 years which have nothing to do with the era Malone played in. Do you realize how ridiculous this is? Or do you not understand logic at all.

I'm not saying Karl didn't play well--he played exceptionally well. The only player in NBA history with +25 PER at 35+. How'd he do it? Maybe Roids. Maybe something else. Who really knows. There aren't many players who were better at 35 than they were at 30, Karl was about as equally good. What does this prove? It basically just proves some players either get better over time, cheat, or it might logically jump to the league getting worse. But who knows which one it is. I have no idea. All I know is that it doesn't prove anything or even logically jump that way.

No. I am only illustrating that that there existed a human in 1988 who could be instantly transformed to 2012 and be considered one of the fastest humans OAT without consideration to how he would improve given the benefits of the other modern sprinters. I don't detract from Bolt his performance because he is an outlier, there are several logical reasons for his superior performance and why he dominates the competition.

The fact you dispose of a "huge outlier" (lol objectivity) is winner for joke of the thread.